Forged
by teawithmilk
Summary: Silver knew of her before he knew her.


Disclaimer: all characters are property of SEGA, Sonic Team and/or DIMPS. Me, I'm just bored.

_forged_

* * *

They called her 'witch'. 'Daughter of Iblis'. By the time Silver was eight, he had heard the stories - the little fire-cat who occasionally came to the shelter with a defiant request, was given some of what she wanted and was turned away. It was a trick, the adults said. She might _look_ injured, or small, or sweet, but everybody knew what her powers were. Iblis had spawned her, Iblis would heal her, and Iblis would send her again. When Silver asked why they couldn't just let her stay - even if they kept her by the front door so she couldn't get anyone? - he was patted on the head, complimented on his gentle soul, and told to carry on with his training.

He wondered about her, not often, usually just in the day or two after she had last turned up. The shelter was so busy and his training was every day, so he usually forgot about her until the next time she appeared.

When he was eleven, the shelter received reports that one of the other safe-houses had been attacked by Iblis. He watched as the adults – humans, hedgehogs, the strongest of every species they had – gathered materials enough to stage a recovery of the survivors. Though he was young, the adults admitted that he was one of the strongest too, what with his gift and all, and showed him how to operate the heavy security doors. They would be gone a day, two at most, they said, and those who had been chosen were to take it in four-hour shifts. If he was on guard and the shelter was attacked, or if it got to the third day and they did not return, he, and the others who were guarding, were to get everybody out and as many as they could safely to one of the other shelters.

Nobody should try to fight Iblis. They would never win.

Half-way through Silver's second shift, something hit the door – only something small, like a rock or a piece of rubble or something. He floated himself up to the tiny peep-hole, and saw nothing.

Iblis playing tricks, he thought, and reached for the message-pipe so that he could call an adult.

More rocks hit. He peered again, and this time caught a glimpse of a shock of purple. _Survivors!_ he thought, hands already flying to the deadlock. "Just a second!" he yelled, using his mind to pull at the chains – forged in Iblis' flames themselves, they were almost impossible for anything to break through, including Iblis. There was no reply, which worried him, so he worked faster, sweat breaking out beneath his short fur and clinging to his spines.

When he got the door open just enough, he peered out and blinked in surprise. There was only one, and she was _tiny_. But he wasn't going to be fooled. Not by anybody. Especially not by her. He crossed his arms, making sure he filled the gap between the door and the wall. "You're the Iblis cat," he said stoutly. "Right?"

"If that's what you want to call me."

Silver watched her warily. She stood still, her posture guarded as though ready to defend herself – or attack? – and looked defiantly back. Her eyes were hard, a glimmering yellow that only stood out from the rest of the burning landscape because of her fur colour, a pale lilac that matched nothing Silver knew of Iblis. He thought for a moment about taking off a restraint, just enough to see what one of Iblis' children _thought_ like: were they jumbled, chaotic thoughts, just like Iblis? Or—

"Aren't you going to ask me what I want?"

"H-huh?"

"I'm not here for you to stare at me. I want a splint, some bandages and water."

"O-oh. Y-yeah, right, just a second."

"...and milk, if you have it."

Silver blinked, half-way through closing the heavy outside door again. Then he laughed. "Hey, just like cats!" She shot him a flat look. "...yeah," he amended hastily, "sorry. We don't really have much of that, and it's used for the babies. I don't think they'll give _you_ any."

"Then I'll settle for the water and the supplies."

They kept a small first-aid kit near the door, and Silver already had his own water ration untouched near him. Rather than leave the door (and the cat) unattended, he tossed them over to her one by one, fighting back the urge to use his powers – the adults had told him not to use them if he could help it, they didn't want Iblis knowing what he could do. As she turned to leave, he caught sight of the reason she had asked for the bandages. Her tail was mangled, bent sharply to the right a half-foot or so from the top. Blood clotted thickly against the fur there, almost as though it had been crushed under something. A relatively straight branch was tied along it by a rough tear of fabric, but while Silver was no medic, he could tell that it wasn't going to heal with just that. "Hey!" he called after her. "What happened to your tail?"

"None of your business," she said tightly, walking away.

"Can't _Iblis_ fix it for you?" he sneered impulsively.

She flinched. Stopped. Looked at him over her shoulder. Silver realised then that she – this cat-girl – terrified him. He braced himself, ready to slam the door closed. She looked at him with those piercing yellow eyes for a moment longer, before she turned and sprinted away.

* * *

There was only one other time after that, perhaps six months later (he wasn't sure). The adults had a policy. When they were sure it was safe, when they were sure Iblis was manifesting elsewhere, the children were led outside to see the surface. It was educational in purpose, to show the younglings what Iblis had done to the planet, and how it differed from the images they had managed to scavenge from computer discs a century or more old. She had turned up, with her injured tail now badly healed with a significant twist in it, and watched them as the youngest children allowed to the surface chased each-other. Though he owed her nothing, not if she was who the adults said she was, Silver couldn't help but wonder – did she know how to play tag? If she did, did Iblis teach her, or did she pick it up from watching them? Who did _she_ play with?

She watched them for a while, lurking just barely out of sight, before vanishing. Silver heard the elders complaining about her at dinner: she had asked for the same she usually did – and this time they had refused her. There were barely enough for the residents as it was now; some shelters, it was rumoured, had nothing at all, it had been decades since they had finally cleared the surface out. They couldn't give precious things to somebody who would only destroy them; and Silver couldn't argue with that, even if it had been his place. They needed to survive – all of them, until Iblis was finally defeated (but nobody really knew when that would be).

* * *

When Silver was twelve-and-a-half, the inevitable happened. Asleep one minute, flying the next, the alarms were shrieking in a twisted, _wrong_ sound that, Silver reflected later, was probably because the wires were melting due to the heat. He didn't stop, didn't _think_, not about anything except for the fact that _he needed to get out_.

Maybe he'd been left behind.

It was the only reason he could think of that there was nobody else around.

And he was okay – because it was Iblis, because it was an attack, because everybody had been told to just get out if it came down to it – help those you saw, but do not stop. Do not look back. Surviving was more important than anything else, and he was an orphan – the other parents would surely be looking after their own children rather than looking for stragglers. He knew a shortcut – a ventilation shaft three sectors down from where he slept (it was quieter there, rather than the big dormitories for all of the misplaced children without carers, when he couldn't sleep, it was easier to meditate when there wasn't a foot kicking him in the back) – one only he could really take because he could fly without flapping. He'd see them when he got to the surface, he told himself, ignoring the twist in his chest with each breath – he'd _see_ them.

But when he threw the metal grid out of his way, when he broke the surface, when he looked around from his vantage point seven feet up, he didn't.

Silver was not so naïve he thought they could have ran away in that short a space of time.

When he dropped, his knees hit the ground first, followed by his fists. Beneath the dirt, he could feel the telltale shake of Iblis moving beneath the crust, ruining the shelter.

They'd said that Iblis was mindless, that all it knew was destruction. Silver thought then that they may have been lying. Or maybe they just didn't know. If Iblis was mindless, it wouldn't still be down there. If all Iblis wanted was to destroy, it would have moved on already, letting him look for survivors.

A scream was bubbling up in his throat like hot soup, thick and choking. He sought for the others, with his eyes and his ears, and got nothing – just Iblis, just the scorched earth. And when he used his mind—

Pain. A shriek of agony, multiplied and left residually on what walls were still solid against Iblis' heat.

Then nothing.

They were all gone.

Everyone except him.

He didn't move for a long time, feeling Iblis, feeling _helpless_, and trying not to break down. He was stronger than this; he wouldn't give Iblis the satisfaction, he didn't know what to _do_–

He wasn't alone.

"Oh."

The cat was there.

His spines raised in fury.

"_You_," he snarled, rounding on her, and rules be damned, if he couldn't avenge the shelter by taking out Iblis, then he would damn well take out its' _daughter_. He caught her in a tight sheen of light before she could back away and forced her to her knees. "This was _you_!"

"Wh-what? What are you _doing_!? Let me go!"

"You brought it here!"

"Brought _what_?! What—how are you—"

He thrust his wrist at her, the clasp to one of his restraints facing upwards. "Take it off."

"No!"

"Take it _off_." And he forced her arms to move.

Her hands – in tattered, somewhat scruffy gloves, were gentle – he felt the soft pad of a finger brush his wrist as she searched for the clasp, and he trembled when she dug into the channel of power that ran around them. Then, the catch was flicked off, and the restraint fell from his around his glove and hit the dirt.

He threw himself. Eyes closed, he heard her gasp before he found what would keep her still and seized her wrist in his other hand, keeping her from running.

Inside, she was ice-cold. Cool, ordered thoughts and muted feelings and nothing, nothing but hate for Iblis. There were memories, too – some scant, some tied to her emotions like anchors. He doubted, just for a second, just enough for her to notice, and she threw blocks at him, angry ones, locking him out.

Silver snarled, and broke every one. _Iblis killed everyone! Iblis destroyed my home! My family, my friends! Don't you dare hide it from me!_

Her voice came to him from his ears, not from her mind. "As if I would!"

"Then why can't I find anything!?"

She said nothing. Silver caught an image of burning bodies, and the wound was too fresh. He pulled back, panting, with the faint ache of a migraine thrumming in his temples.

The cat stared at him. Her nose was bleeding, stark on her white muzzle, and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot and sore-looking. Silver felt a wrench of shame – he had been too rough, too desperate to find what wasn't even there. "I—" he began. "You're not—?"

"No."

"You've never—"

"My parents are dead," the girl said flatly, and without his powers restricted he could catch a flicker of guarding, something in her mind that kept her from telling him anything more than that – _and why should she?_ he thought guiltily. She had been innocent and the people at the shelter had shunned her. The people who were all—

"...mine too," Silver replied, looking meekly back at her. "Wh-when I was seven, not just now." She gave him an imperious look of supreme disinterest. "...I'm sorry. I—I just—I thought—"

She snorted, causing a small spatter of blood to land on her glove. "I don't care what you thought. People usually think the same."

He hung his head.

"More people are dead now. And Iblis has just destroyed your home. What are you going to do about it?"

Silver turned away from her, looking at the glowing pile of hot rock, ash and burned, curled twigs that, he realised with dawning horror, weren't really twigs at all.

He was quiet for a long moment, and it took everything he had to swallow back the rising shriek in his throat. Running had done nothing. Hiding had killed them all. "...I'm going to destroy Iblis," he said roughly.

There was silence, for a minute, broken only by the crackling of flames and the soft sound of rock as it collapsed into dust. Then, unseen, the cat nodded, and stepped up to stand at his side. "My name is Blaze," she said quietly. "Let me help."

* * *

because these two really needed yet another "OMG HOW DID THEY MEAT" fic, didn't they. ¬¬


End file.
